Sep 15 2008
The Evolving Junkyard
The number one argument on the Intelligent Design hit parade could be classified as an argument from incredulity. Because I can’t comprehend it, evolution must be false. Instead, the invisible friend of my church did it.
Why did your invisible friend give the Florida Manatee (its nose photographed above) genes that indicate its closest relative is the land-dwelling elelphant from continents away?
Many times the IDer will rant that evolution makes as much sense as claiming a tornado ripping through a junkyard could create a jet aircraft. Of course, what they fail to recognize/acknowledge is that the process is not completely random. Think “natural selection.”
Speaking of junkyards. You may have heard that a substantial amount of an organism’s genetic code consists of “junk DNA.” In a news release I encountered at ScienceDaily last week I learned that genetic junk may be more than mere junk. In Yale Researchers Find ‘Junk DNA’ May Have Triggered Key Evolutionary Changes In Human Thumb And Foot I read the following:
Results from a comparative analysis of the human, chimpanzee, rhesus macaque and other genomes reported in the journal Science suggest our evolution may have been driven not only by sequence changes in genes, but by changes in areas of the genome once thought of as “junk DNA.”
and
Researchers have long suspected changes in gene expression contributed to human evolution, but this had been difficult to study until recently because most of the sequences that control genes had not been identified. In the last several years, scientists have discovered that non-coding regions of the genome, far from being junk, contain thousands of regulatory elements that act as genetic “switches” to turn genes on or off.
Perhaps the fundies’ hatred of scientists is not misdirected. For, year after year after year, scientists are piling yet more evidence upon antiquated notions of how the world came to be.
Can we call in a priest to give religion its last rights already?
